US students to visit India for IT projects

Eighteen students from the University of Michigan US will spend eight weeks in India in the summer of 2014 to work on various information technology projects.

They will be going to India under the Global Information Engagement Programme of the university's School of Information, according to a university statement.

The programme has been granted USD 1.8 million by the university provost's office.

"The School of Information has strong ties with India, and our new Global Information Engagement Programme will allow our students to strengthen that bond with hands-on experience, solving problems and serving the global community even before they graduate," Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, dean of the School of Information, said.

Among the projects the students will work on are a smartphone application to book train tickets for Mumbai local trains, a language learning application for deaf students in India, and an online repository for consultation for human rights for a Bangalore lawyers collective.

The selected students will self-organise into groups of two to four. Though they will primarily come from the School of Information, the teams are allowed to recruit graduate students from other university programmes to round out skill sets, the statement said.

"Once the student groups choose their projects, we will work with each team so they will have a customised training programme tailored to their projects," Joyojeet Pal, an Indian who is the faculty lead of the programme, said.

"Before the students go to India, they would have already studied the problem for a few months," he said.